Otto Hahn was a German chemist and pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. He is regarded as one of the most significant chemists of all times and especially as "the father of nuclear chemistry".
Background
Hahn was the youngest son of Heinrich Hahn (1845-1922), a prosperous glazier and entrepreneur ("Glasbau Hahn"), and Charlotte Hahn, née Giese (1845-1905). Together with his brothers Karl, Heiner and Julius, Otto was raised in a sheltered environment.
Education
Hahn began to study chemistry and mineralogy at the University of Marburg. His subsidiary subjects were physics and philosophy. Hahn joined the Students' Association of Natural Sciences and Medicine, a student fraternity and a forerunner of today's "Landsmannschaft Nibelungia" (Coburger Convent der akademischen Landsmannschaften und Turnerschaften). He spent his third and fourth semester studying under Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Munich.
In 1901, Hahn received his doctorate in Marburg for a dissertation entitled On Bromine Derivates of Isoeugenol, a topic in classical organic chemistry. After completing his one-year military service, the young chemist returned to the University of Marburg, where for two years he worked as assistant to his doctoral supervisor, Geheimrat Professor Theodor Zincke.
Career
In 1905, at the age of twenty-six, he discovered the radioactive isotope radiothorium while working under the direction of Sir William Ramsey in London.
In 1907, working with Rutherford in Canada, he discovered radioactinium, and it was during his association with Rutherford that he decided to forsake organic chemistry for the chemistry of radioactive substances.
Returning to Germany, Hahn continued his researches at the Emil Fischer Institute in Berlin. Here he discovered mesothorium, which for a time played the role of a substitute for radium for medical purposes. At this time he began working in cooperation with the physicist Dr. Lise Meitner, a partnership which was to last nearly thirty years.
In 1912 he became associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem. During this association he and his co-workers discovered protactinium and showed that it is the mother substance of the actinide series. They also proved the existence of nuclear isomers, estimated the age of the earth from its radioactivity, and improved the methods of high-speed chemical analysis which must be employed where rapidly decaying radioactive materials are concerned.
In 1935, with Dr. Meitner and Fritz Strassman, Hahn began his work on the bombardment of uranium with neutrons. This led to the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938. For this work he was offered the Nobel Prize for chemistry for 1944, but was forbidden by Hitler to accept it. Hahn then continued to engage in atomic research for Germany during World War II, until he was captured by Allied forces and taken to England. He went to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize in 1946, and subsequently became president of the Max Planck Institute at Göttingen,Gottingen, West Germany.
Hahn was an opponent of Jewish persecution by the Nazi Party and after World War II he became a passionate campaigner against the use of nuclear energy as a weapon. He served as the last President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in 1946 and as the founding President of the Max Planck Society from 1948 to 1960. Considered by many to be a model for scholarly excellence and personal integrity, he became one of the most influential and revered citizens of the new Federal Republic of Germany.
Politics
Hahn was an opponent of national socialism and Jewish persecution by the Nazi Party.
Membership
He was a member of scientific societies in Berlin, Goettingen, Munich, Halle, Stockholm, Vienna, Madrid, Helsinki, Lisbon, Mainz, Rome, Copenhagen and Boston.